West Fork Complex fire flares into mushroom cloud, increases acreage

Jay Vaughn, a summer resident of Creede, watches as the Papoose fire kicks up June 26. The West Fork complex fire has charred 110,028 acres. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

The West Fork Complex fire, following a "mushroom cloud" eruption, has burned 110,028 acres as of Thursday evening, according to firefighting officials.

"It got started about noon or so (Wednesday)," said Bobby Kitchens, spokesman for the Type 1 Incident Management Team. "It started building up, and it really built a big mushroom cloud up into the night and really added about 11,000 acres."

The fire remains about 20 percent contained, and no structures had been destroyed, Kitchens said. Beetle-killed spruce on the south end of the Papoose fire fueled the flare. The Papoose fire is one of the three fires in the West Fork Complex, along with the West Fork and Windy Pass fires.

The fire burned through a sulfur pit mine, but luckily, Kitchens said, no one was around.

"If sulfur catches on fire, the fumes can be really dangerous," Kitchens said.

Firefighters were able to defend some structures flanking the flare-up, Kitchens said, which is a main objective in fighting this fire in such steep, rugged terrain.

"We always report percent containment, and that's always a thing that everybody hangs their hat on, but in this case this is not our goal," he said. "Our goal is to protect life and property, and we've been pretty successful in that."

Kitchens said some communities around the fire, such as Spar City on the east end of the Papoose fire and some areas around Humphrey's Lake near the West Fork fire, remain evacuated.

Advertisement

People from the town of South Fork were able to return to their homes last Friday after being evacuated.

Kitchens said even once the flames die down and folks return home, smoke will be visible, and the threat will continue.

"It's not over," he said.

Only four other fires burn in the state, all of which reportedly have at least 95 percent containment.

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story